Epic Games has created award-winning series like "Gears of War" and "Unreal Tournament," as well as a popular proprietary development platform. That platform, Unreal Engine, doesn't only appear in Epic titles, though. The company has allowed other developers to license it - for a fee. Now it's opening up that platform to independent developers with no upfront cost.

Unreal Engine has been used by some of the top developers in the industry, but Epic has been on a mission lately to expand its reach. Last year, it introduced a version of the engine called "Unreal Development Kit" and offered it at a relatively low licensing fee. In fact, for educational games or other non-commercial applications, developers didn't need to pay anything.

And for those with commercial aspirations but not a lot of spare room in their budget, Epic made Unreal Development Kit available for US$99, with no royalty fees required unless the game pulled in revenues of more than $5,000. Now Epic has nixed the $99 upfront fee and raised the royalty requirement to $50,000.